She was rigid in his arms.
His chest filling, he pressed his lips to her forehead. ‘I’m sorry for hurting you. I’m sorry for every cruel word and deed. I’m sorry for abandoning you. I’m sorry for never fighting for you. I’m sorry for doubting you and for allowing my foolish pride and insecurities to blind me. I wish to God that I’d had the courage to believe in you as much as you believed and trusted in me and I wish I’d had the sense to admit my love for you before I threw it all away.’ He found her lips and kissed them with the same clinging desperation she had kissed him with all that time ago in his office. He’d known then, in his heart, that she loved him but had been too blind and untrusting in himself to see it.
And now he had to accept that it was too late.
He breathed her scent in one last time. ‘I love you, Natasha. Always know that. If you can never be mine again, know I will always be yours. I will wait for you, for ever if that’s what it takes. My heart will always belong to you and the precious life you carry inside you.’
When he pulled away he found her eyes closed and her pale face taut.
He released his hold on her hands and gently stroked her cheek. ‘Goodbye, bella.’
Natasha knew by the coldness that suddenly enveloped her that Matteo was walking away.
There was a lightness in her limbs and her head, a balloon filled with something undefinable expanding in her chest.
His words reverberated in her ears as his footsteps became more distant.
So many words. So much meaning behind them. So much love and tenderness and pain.
She opened her eyes.
Everything looked different. What had only minutes ago seemed dark was now filled with dazzling light, the surfaces of the kitchen units gleaming, the table she was sitting at shining.
And that dazzling brilliance was in her too.
She looked at the oven clock. She was going to be late for work, late for the job that had given her her pride and self-worth...
Matteo had already given her those things. She’d proved she could make it on her own. One day she might even be happy. But it was this wonderful man who had loved her and broken her heart who completed her and she knew with utter clarity that if she didn’t swallow her new-found pride any future happiness would be stained. The bright colours evoked by his words now would fade to sepia. He was the one who brought colour to her life.
The balloon in her chest, which had been steadily growing bigger and bigger while Matteo had finally opened his heart, suddenly exploded and flooded her with the warmth she had never hoped to feel again.
He did love her. And he did trust her.
And then her mouth opened and she was screaming out his name, laughing and crying all at the same time, her unsteady legs racing to catch him.
But he caught her, in the small hallway by the front door, capturing her in his strong arms and holding her so tightly her feet left the floor.
‘Don’t you dare go,’ she said, before finding his mouth and smothering it and his entire face with kisses. ‘Don’t you dare, don’t you dare.’
It was a long time until he put her back down. He took her face in his hands and kissed her, before staring into her eyes, bewilderment and hope ringing from his. ‘You want me to stay?’
She smiled her first real smile in so, so long. ‘Only if you promise to stay for ever.’
The bleakness that had been etched on his face lifted, wonder taking its place. ‘If you’ll have me, I will stay with you for ever.’
She covered the hand palming her cheek. ‘I will always be yours. I love you. I will always love you.’
He kissed her again, a kiss that conveyed more meaning than any words could. Into her mouth, he said, ‘And I will always love you.’
With one final deep kiss, he lifted her into his arms and carried her up to the bedroom, where he proceeded to show her exactly how deep his love for her ran.
EPILOGUE
NATASHA STOOD UNDER the glorious late-summer sun at the entrance of the Pellegrini chapel at Castello Miniato and waited for the music that would cue her entrance to walk down the aisle. Holding tightly to her arm, as proud as punch to be the one giving her away, stood her brother-in-law Daniele, now the legal owner of the castello and who in approximately one hour would become her cousin by marriage.
Behind her, flapping the train of Natasha’s wedding dress, was Francesca, taking her duties as chief bridesmaid with a little too much enthusiasm.
The music started and were it not for Francesca deliberately treading on the train to hold her back, Natasha would have galloped down the aisle. As far as she was concerned, she’d waited long enough to marry the man she loved, a man whose greatness had only increased in her eyes since he’d admitted his love for her. Matteo had sold his chain of vanity clinics to a hedge fund manager for an obscene amount of money.
When they returned from their honeymoon he would be opening a new type of clinic in Miami, a specialist hospital dedicated to performing surgery on the most severely disfigured people, adults and children alike. He would be funding the building and running costs and staff wages himself. It would be the first of what he planned to be many such specialist hospitals. Natasha would be in charge of the interior design, her brief to make it as homely and comforting as a hospital could be.
Forcing herself to walk sedately, she put one foot in front of the other and beamed her way towards Matteo. By his side stood Felipe, his best man, who, naturally, didn’t look once at her as his eyes were too busy fixing on his wife. The Lorenzis had beaten them down the aisle by four months.
She smiled at her parents, sitting in the second row, and wondered if they’d asked Matteo for more money yet. She couldn’t find it in her heart to hate them. They might be contenders for worst parents in the world, but they were her worst parents in the world and she looked on them as an example of how not to parent her own child. As she and Matteo lived in Miami and her parents were perpetually skint despite the regular large deposits Matteo transferred into their account, she rarely saw them. It was no loss, just as Matteo no longer felt the loss of his own parents. They’d created such a tight family unit of their own they had no need to wish for things that could never be.
The squeals of a bored, grumpy baby mingled with the music. Vanessa, sitting in the front row rocking baby Lauren, smiled when Natasha met her eye and blew her a kiss before attempting to soothe the fractious child.
Natasha blew a kiss back and then aimed one at her two-month-old daughter. As if by a miracle, the kiss landed and Lauren quietened. Or maybe it was Vanessa’s magic touch.
Slowly the family had pulled back together, drawing comfort and understanding from each other. Natasha and Matteo had been pulled back into the bosom of the Pellegrini family too, and Francesca and Felipe had been delighted to accept the honour of being Lauren’s godparents and guardians.
And then she was at Matteo’s side and they were exchanging their vows and sliding on the rings that would cement their love and declare to the world that they did belong to each other and that no one and nothing could ever tear them apart again.
* * * * *
EXCLUSIVE EXTRACT
Charlotte Adair has spent her life locked away – but once freed, she finds the one man she’s ever loved, billionaire Rafe Costa, is now blind, believes she betrayed him, and is bent on a vengeful seduction! Weeks after their scorching encounter he learns she’s pregnant—with twins! Rafe steals Charlotte away, but she is a far from biddable prisoner. She is irresistible, defiant—and Rafe must seduce her into compliance!
Read on for a sneak preview of Maisey Yates’s book
THE ITALIAN’S PREGNANT PRISONER
The final part of her Once Upon a Seduction… trilogy
Charlotte hadn’t touched a man since Rafe. She’d had no interest.
She needed to find some interest. Because she was going to have a normal life. Whatever she did, it would be her choice. And that was the point.
Sh
e didn’t know what answers she had expected to find here. Right now, the only clear answer seemed to be that her body, her heart, was still affected by him.
He excused himself from the group, and suddenly, he was walking her way. And she froze. Like a deer caught in the headlights. Or rather, like a woman staring at Rafe Costa.
She certainly wasn’t the only woman staring. He moved with fluid grace, and if she didn’t know better, she would never have known his sight was impaired at all.
He was coming closer, and as he did her heart tripped over itself, her hands beginning to shake. She wished she could touch him.
Oh, she wanted it more than anything. In that moment, she wanted it more than her next breath. To put her hands on Rafe Costa’s face one more time. To kiss those lips again. To place her hand over his chest and see if she could still make his heart race.
It was easy to forget that her stepmother had told her how Rafe had left, taking an incentive offered by her father to end his tenure there earlier. It was easy to forget that and remember instead the way it had felt when he had kissed her. Touched her. The way she had pleaded with him to take her virginity, to make her his in every way.
Really, he had never wanted her. He had simply been toying with her.
She should remember that. Her treacherous, traitorous body should remember that well. But it didn’t. Instead, it was fluttering. As if a host butterflies had been set loose inside her.
Suddenly, he was there. So close that if she wanted to she could reach out and touch the edge of his sleeve with her fingertips.
Could bump into him accidentally, just to make contact. He wouldn’t know it was her. He couldn’t.
Suddenly, he turned. He was looking past her, his dark eyes unseeing, unfocused. But then, he reached out and unerringly grabbed hold of her wrist, dragging her toward his muscular body.
“Charlotte.”
Don’t miss
THE ITALIAN’S PREGNANT PRISONER
By Maisey Yates
Available October 2017
www.millsandboon.co.uk
Copyright ©2017 Maisey Yates
ISBN: 978-1-474-05284-9
CLAIMING HIS ONE-NIGHT BABY
© 2017 Michelle Smart
Published in Great Britain 2017
by Mills & Boon, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF
All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. This edition is published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.
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